SCOTUS: CA Can’t Hide Kids’ ‘Gender Presentation’ From Parents

The U.S. Supreme Court delivered a major win for California parents seeking to protect their children from LGBT ideology in state schools on Monday.

In its per curiam opinion, the high court vacated a stay (“pause”) issued by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on a December injunction by a California-based district court judge. That permanent injunction prohibited enforcement of a California policy that permitted or forced school employees to “mislead[] the parent or guardian of a minor child in the education system about their child’s gender presentation at school.”

In his order, District Judge Roger Benitez, a Bush 43 appointee, further required California officials to notify school personnel of his ruling and to include in materials for parents and faculty a statement acknowledging parents’ “federal constitutional right to be informed if their public school student child expresses gender incongruence.”

California parents’ victory was short-lived, however, because the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals froze Benitez’s order a few weeks later. In its unanimous ruling, the appellate court’s three-judge panel of Democrat appointees claimed that state officials “have shown that ‘there is a substantial case for relief on the merits,’” and said it was “skeptical of the district court’s decision on the merits.”

The 9th Circuit’s decision prompted plaintiffs to file an application with SCOTUS, in which they requested that the high court vacate the 9th Circuit’s stay and allow Benitez’s injunction to take effect.

In its unsigned opinion, SCOTUS granted the plaintiffs’ request to vacate the 9th Circuit’s injunction “with respect to the parents because this aspect of the stay is not ‘justified under the governing four-factor test.’” The high court noted that the parents are likely to succeed on the merits of their claims and that they will suffer “irreparable harm” if the 9th Circuit’s ruling is allowed to remain in place.

The court’s order does not apply to the plaintiff teachers suing over the policy, however. Associate Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito said they would have granted the plaintiffs’ application in full.

Associate Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.

Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett authored a concurring opinion, in which she was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh. She noted how “California’s nondisclosure policy thus quite obviously excludes parents from highly important decisions about their child’s mental health … and is unlikely to satisfy heightened scrutiny.” She also stated that the court’s “resolution of the parents’ likelihood of success on this claim is dictated by existing law.”

The Trump appointee went on to rebuke criticisms raised by the dissent, which, as summarized by Barrett, claimed that Monday’s ruling is “a sign of the Court’s ‘impatience’ to reach [a decision on] the merits.” She noted how the Supreme Court’s “per curiam opinion … explains its reasoning.” She also wrote that the “choice to say more rather than less is perhaps the source of the dissent’s concern that our disposition of this application will be taken as a ‘conclusive merits judgment.’”

“Interim applications routinely require the Court to balance the lock-in risk of saying too much against the transparency cost of saying too little,” Barrett wrote. “When an interim application comes to us, ‘we must decide it — grant or deny.’ … Because the … factors strongly favor the parents … I see no basis for denying this application.”

In her dissenting opinion, Kagan (joined by Jackson) claimed that the court’s decision to grant the parents interim relief is an example of “how [its] emergency docket can malfunction.” The Obama appointee attacked the court, contending that it bypassed the “ordinary appellate process” and granted “relief by means of a terse, tonally dismissive ruling designed to conclusively resolve the dispute.”

“The Court is impatient: It already knows what it thinks, and insists on getting everything over quickly,” Kagan wrote.

Monday’s decision comes several months after the Supreme Court affirmed parental rights in Mahmoud v. Taylor. In that 6-3 ruling, the justices confirmed that parents possess the authority to opt their children out of LGBT propaganda pushed by schools.

Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He is a co-recipient of the 2025 Dao Prize for Excellence in Investigative Journalism. His work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics and RealClearHealth. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood